Welcome Wagon - Happy to be Here

Since moving to the 'country' -- (yes, yes, I know I've said it's only 5 mins to town), little things pop up regularly that make me happy to be here.

For example, it's pitch black at night.  Our last house in town had a streetlight right outside our bedroom window.  In Montreal, the house I lived in overlooked a freeway.  I can regularly see stars at night -- well, as regular as it doesn't rain.  There was a full moon last night and it was just picture perfect above the forest in front of the house.  Unfortunately my photography skills are not up to scratch (Add 'master night shot settings' to my 'To Do' list).

The other morning we saw two hares in our yard.  And they didn't just scamper off, they jumped around the backyard for a bit, chased each other, moved back to the side of the house and then finally took their leave.  Alannah was delighted.  I think she thought they were cats though.

And we have a lovely view.  The house is on a little hill and we're the first house on the road so our living room windows have an unobstructed view of the green hills and farms in the distance.  I am caught up in the daily habitual movement of sheep wandering up and down 2 farms I see in the distance.  And I've become fixated on comparing the amount of rain and angle of direction of the drops each time I look out the window when it has been raining (and it has rained a lot since we moved in!).

The last thing I want to mention are the neighbours.  We've had a real lovely welcome from a lot of people living on this road.  Perhaps it helps that we know some of them or know of many of them from around town but we probably know or have met as many people on this road in the last month than we knew in our estate/subdivision in town (and we lived there for seven years!).  Two ladies from down the road dropped by to with the most wonderful welcome basket (and what a basket!) and flowers, I just had to take pictures.

 Gorgeous hydrangeas cut from her garden.  Everyone loves hydrangeas, don't they?!  And she has a lovely varitey that have a pretty blue centre on the white petals that I've not seen before!  And of course in neighbourly fashion, she's offered to make a cutting, set a plant, and give it to me when it's ready for planting (well down the way of course but how kind!)

 Bottle of white wine, homemade coffee cake (DELICIOUS -- thankfully, the walnuts were just decorative and I could eat every bit of the rest of it!), homemade gooseberry jam, and fresh picked veg from her garden.

Selection of veg:  yellow courgettes (even Stephen ate them in the pasta dish I put them into), purple peas, french beans, and garlic.  Let me tell you -- fresh garlic is something else!  So easy to grow and SUCH a difference in taste and freshness!

I am itching to start our own garden now!

And a gorgeous orchid too!

First Look

I always think I'll have loads of time to do 'stuff' while on mat leave because babies just 'eat and sleep', right?  This is my 2nd child as well and for some reason I was still disillusioned.  Perhaps also as having a c-section this time around, I figured I'd have loads of time to be in front of a computer to post updates, Skype friends & family, etc.  Admittedly, I have had loads of opportunities (as I've spent atleast 2 weeks stuck on the couch feeding this babe) but I've lacked the focus (in retrospect, ok I should have anticipated that) which has just started to right itself recently.

So our official moving day was July 20th but we still had the other house so there was on-going bits & pieces getting moved over the next week.  I was seriously skeptical about settling in on that Friday as I still felt there was so much to be done but all fears were for nought.  We had all the necessities and things have just gotten put away or moved around in drips and drabs since.

We still need to do loads to settle in but it's early days really.  I have no idea how people can have everything in turn-key condition right from the get go.  So here we go, 'bienvenue chez nous'.

Well, it doesn't look so inviting yet but hey, the door's open, come on in!

The entry hall has a double height ceiling so it gets lots of light from the skylight.

Turn left and it takes you into the living areas of the house.

Remember, this is what it originally looked like:

And then after walls came down and loads of work under way ...

Walls plastered, painted, radiators in & floors poured ...

And NOW!!!

The funny square above the window is where the old electricity meter used to be.  It was only moved last week so a bit of fill and paint will touch that up fine.  There are shades to go on the chandeliers.  Decisions about blinds.  What sort of storage/shelving to get.  What to put over the stove.  The list is endless.  And I would love a new set of sofas that would suit the space better but everything's money now isn't it?!

The old main door was replaced with a single pane window.  It lets in loads of light and on a good day I can't help but stare out it and think what fabulous scenery surrounds us (minus the building site rubble of course!).

 You walk immediately into the kitchen from the entry hall and here's how it turned out:

I love it!!!!!!  Colin, at Abbey Kitchens did a fantastic job on the units.  The colour is a sort of khaki grey instead of a blue grey (which I initially thought I wanted).  And without even planning it, it goes perfectly with the feature stone.  So as you can see, I went with grey and decided on this pewter-kind-of bar type handle after the handle dilemma I 'faced' a few weeks back.  And while I still like cream kitchens (which we had in our other house),  after a few weeks of living here I can already see that the grey will hold up far better against the tornado that is our 19 month old toddler.  I'll try to do a separate post on the kitchen features I like best when I get the time to take a few more pics.

I'm still on a look out for light pendants above the sink & counter.  I'm undecided about what sort of backsplash should go behind the cooker (glass, tile, stone?).  Eventually, I'll decide about blinds too.  And of course there's the little bits that bring the kitchen together both for the pretty factor and functionality.

As for the living room, here's the best before & after extreme:

A shout out to the many people who gave us a hand, with moving, storage, cleaning, baby-sitting, etc ...  This just a small group of the gang taking a break with a fry up.  Thanks so much!

And Tommy, this one's for you!

So hopefully I'll start posting again more frequently, if not for you, then to keep the ball rolling on further projects and finishing touches!

House Plans: Old and New

Sorry to anyone checking in for news and updates to find I haven't updated the blog in weeks.  It's been a bit busy but now that I've started maternity leave (and baby hasn't come yet), I can do a bit of catch up!

As you can imagine, lots has happened at the house which hopefully I'll update over the next few posts (well, depending on baby's arrival).  Things are really coming together and we can really see how the rooms are laid out.  After talking to my sister, she asked me to post some pics of the layout so she could actually visualise what walls were where and what we've changed.

So the original house plan looked like this.  As you can see there are a lot of pokey little rooms and some pretty thick walls in the original house layout.

This whole area is converted to living space and there is a new build extension for the utility and bedrooms that goes out off the hall at the top of the picture.  The new plans essentially follow as below with a few changes to exact position & length of the remaining walls:

As I said before, there won't be an island as the kitchen is a bit too narrow and the dining room table will be positioned in the other direction to fill the space a bit more. Knocking down the centre wall and making the larger opening was such a good idea.  Walking around the space it really feels so much more spacious but as there are some internal walls, it still has a cozy feel to it.  We're really excited about how it's coming out!

Ready to be Underwhelmed?

As you've seen, there's loads going on inside the house and unless you've come for a visit, I haven't really described what the layout is like.

I haven't a clue what you think the exterior looks like but here it is:

Yep, that's it.  Not so exciting from the outside.  Here's more.

No not a dirt track but our driveway

Looking downhill at where the driveway meets the road

Bet you're even more underwhelmed.  And likely wondering where oh where in the middle of nowhere we will be living.

So here's the (brief) story.

Part of the old house (yellow building) was built a long long time ago.  Ha ha ... I have no clue.  Initially, it was thought that the 'cottage' could've been built circa 1930 but since Steve has begun knocking walls and uncovering the original layout he thinks it probably was even earlier than that.
There was some major refurbishment in the 1980s with an addition added and a new roof at this point (which helped hide the fact that a fireplace was hiding in that really thick bedroom wall).  The layout of this cottage had 3 small bedrooms, kitchen, sitting room, and bathroom.

In 2008, the previous owners got planning permission and built a dormer extension which now houses all the bedrooms and bathroom.  They had plans to renovate the old cottage to contain just the living spaces but then decided to put the house up for sale.  Though the dormer extension is mostly finished (it's floored, bathrooms completed, electrics done) since the owners knew their plan was to move, they never actually lived in the new extension.  As you can see, the new front entrance is between the old house and new extension.

So this is where we come in and why we get to knock loads of walls.  And while there's lots of work to be done inside, there's clearly even more work to be done on the grounds as well which at the moment is a lot of overgrown hilly mounds of hairy grassy weedy rocky land.

Which brings me to mention, this is surprisingly not in the 'middle of nowhere' but seriously only 5 minutes from town and our current house!

And also on the site are OUTBUILDINGS!  I would call them sheds but you don't understand how excited Stephen was about the OUTBUILDINGS!

I was rather indifferent at the time we bought but now I'm eyeing up one of these for a potting shed as I'm beginning to dream about all the GIY veggies and plants I'll have next year.  Dreams!

And Now We Begin

So finally after months (and I'm talking about MONTHS) of dealing with Mr. Banker and a faceless group of Mr & Mrs. Underwriters, we have finally gotten the keys to the house.  Woohoo!
This has been a long and very frustrating PROCESS which has taken a lot of wind out of our sails but now we can get excited about the house again as work has begun!  And I don't want to bore anyone with tedious details.  If you really want to hear about the ridiculous requests we had to deal with, give me a shout, I can go on for ages.  But moving on ....

Now we weren't really looking to move ... we're very happy in our comfy 4-bed semi-detached home in a nice and quiet estate (read: 'subdivision') in town.  But Stephen's one of those guys who is constantly looking at websites for auto and house sales.  Just out of curiosity.  I think it's an addiction.

And one day last summer he went for a cycle around the roads near his home place (read: 'the place he grew up') and saw a house for sale.  We looked at the listing on-line and I thought he was crazy.  The pictures just did nothing for it.  But he convinced me to take a look and off we went see the house with the auctioneer (read: 'realtor').  And I was convinced.  But it does need work.  A significant amount of it.

And the rest is history (it really is history as it is now nearly 10 months later and we have only just gotten the keys and started the renovations).  Oh right ... I said I was moving on ...  As you can see, I have a hard time letting go ...

I'll go tomorrow and try to get some decent pics of the outside to explain what's going on with it.  But in the meantime here's a pic of the view ... aren't you getting excited too?!